The invention relates generally to communication devices and communication systems. More specifically, the invention relates to a system and method for establishing multiple bandwidth-limited connections for a communication device such as, for example, separate uplink and downlink connections.
FIG. 1 shows a system block diagram of a known communication network. Communication device 100 is coupled to mobile network 110 by wireless connection 105. Mobile network 110 is coupled to gateway 120. Gateway 120 is also coupled to network 130, which is in turn coupled to network service A 140, network service B 150 and network service C 160. Network services 140, 150 and 160 can be, for example, storage devices storing content such as, for example, multimedia content in the form of an Internet site that is capable of being fetched by network service requests, or software applications that can receive instruction from a remote location such as an e-mail listing service.
Communication device 100 can be any type of appropriate communication device that is coupled to a mobile network 110 via a bandwidth-limited connection such as a wireless connection. Communication device 100 can be, for example, a wireless telephone, a wireless personal digital assistant (PDA), a wireless pager or any sort of hybrid wireless device that combines some or all their functionality. In other words, the communication device 100 can be any type of device that allows communications based on, for example, voice, data, text, graphics, animation, multimedia content or combinations thereof.
Gateway 120 can be any sort of appropriate gateway device or interface between a mobile network 110 and a different type of network such as a non-wireless network represented in FIG. 1 as network 130. Network 130 can include multiple types of networks such as the plain old telephone system (POTS), a data transmitting network or combinations thereof and can include additional types of gateways and other types of networks not shown.
In the known system configuration shown in FIG. 1, a single wireless connection is typically established between communication device 100 and mobile network 110. This wireless connection is shown as connection 105. Such a known wireless connection can allow communications other than voice-only communications. The known wireless connection can be configured, for example, using the Short Message Service (SMS) protocol or the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP).
The SMS protocol, for example, is a text-messaging service that uses the voice-based protocol of a network. The SMS protocol can support most wireless networks such as, for example, a Global System for Mobile Communications (GMS)-based network, a code-division multiple access (CDMA)-based network, or a time-division multiple access (TDMA)-based network. Regardless of the network configuration, the SMS protocol allows a text-messaging service over a single wireless connection between the communication device and the mobile network.
Similarly, the WAP protocol establishes a single connection between the communication device and the mobile network to allow communications other than voice-only communications. In particular, the WAP protocol is configured to operate at the Open System Interconnection (OSI) transport layer (i.e., information is exchanged and delivered between and within networks) rather than the network layer protocol. The WAP protocol is based on a request-response mechanism. Consequently, a request sent from a communication device 100 over wireless connection 105 to the mobile network 110 is received by a WAP-compatible gateway 120. The WAP-compatible gateway 120 then creates a fetch request compatible with network 130 and fetches the requested information, for example, from network service A 140. In this specific example based on the WAP protocol, network service A 140 is a web site that has content, which can be fetched by a request (also referred to herein as a fetch request) from communication device 100. Once the content from network service A 140 is fetched and forwarded through gateway 120, it is provided through the mobile network 110 and wireless connection 105 to communication device 100. Once the requested content is fetched and provided to communication device 100, the specific connection 105 is removed until the next fetch request occurs at which point in time a new communication connection 105 is established.
A fundamental limitation of such a WAP-based configuration is that when communication device 100 sends a fetch request over connection 105, additional fetch requests cannot be sent from communication device 100 until the response to the initial fetch request is received by communication device 100 over wireless connection 105. At this point in time, the connection is torn down. After the next fetch request is sent from communication device 100, a new connection is established specifically for that new fetch request.
Consequently, known protocols such as the SMS protocol and the WAP protocol are limited in either their ability to deliver more than just text-based messaging or their ability to provide multimedia content in more than a serial request-response manner. Thus, a need exists to provide better capabilities to communication devices connected to a network over a wireless connection.